I don't want to get into a big discussion, but I did find things in both books a little predictable. Inspiraction from Lord Of The Rings, Star Wars, Pern, etc. were apperant, and the use of cliches and due ex machina was annoying.

Funnily enough, I didn't like the main character very much. But I rarely like main characters. I prefer Brom over Eragon, Han over Luke, Ginny over Harry ( ), Gimli over Frodo, and so on a so on.

But I'm just picky. But something when I read a book or watch a movie, I can't help but think "I could write/direct this better.

TheOrk wrote:The storyline at the site seems painfully generic though.

One of it's downfalls, to say the least.

Yes...can you say Star Wars or Lord Of The Rings? Evil member of good warrior order takes over the world until the farmboy hero topples him with newfound powers and allies? Though in this case, the story's so similar, you could probably shout it.

of course, lord of the rings came out 50 years ago and ushered in the genre, setting conventions and cliches which would be imitated. not that lotr was so earth shatteringly original or anything, either, but it wasn't supposed to be. tolkien was trying to write his own heroic epic - and heroic epics (like beowulf) tend to have very straightforward plots and obvious good/evil differentiations. otherwise it's not all that heroic, really. as a side note i always thought tolkien using orcs, instead of some other human faction (not counting easterlings and southrons) was brilliant, because it gave him scads of baddies to kill off indiscriminantly without having to worry about moral ambiguity. aragorn good, orcs bad. let's get 'em.

which is one of the main reasons i tend to gravitate toward the china mieville/george r.r. martin camps of fantasy series, to avoid tired cliches and "there once lived a great hero..." storylines.

of course, lord of the rings came out 50 years ago and ushered in the genre

Depends on what genre you're talking about. If you're generally referring to medievalesque fantasy, you'd be wrong. Tolkien has predecessors. Robert Howard, for instance, was publishing Conan stories before Lord of the Rings was written.

tolkien was trying to write his own heroic epic - and heroic epics (like beowulf) tend to have very straightforward plots and obvious good/evil differentiations.

I don't know about that. Beowulf, obviously one of Tolkien's inspirations, doesn't entirely portray Grendel as evil - but rather wronged and in need of some killin'. Likewise, Tolkien has some ambiguity in his stories. Megablox, lots of it. Elves killing other Elves to chase down the bad guy. 'Evil men' where one of the main characters wonders if they are truly evil. A misguided good guy turning evil, but not entirely evil, seeming to never truly understand that he's turned (Saruman). Orcs and Gondorians - sure, that's a given for moral straightforwardness (kind of). But taken as a whole, Middle-earth is far from being morally absolute.

In any event. . . I'm looking forward to Eragon. I've never read the books, myself -- but I always enjoy a good fantasy/medieval flick. And I don't even mind if it's cheesy. I mean, Conan the Barbarian was cheesy. BeastMaster was cheesy. Cheesy can be good. We'll see. At the very least, it should -look- pretty impressive, as it seems fantasy and historical movies are getting better budgets ever since LotR.

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